Vivi
The border is not merely a geographical barrier; its most complex and violent manifestation often unfolds within the invisibility of relational dynamics, where it draws the boundary line between what society defines as “normal” and what it rejects as alterity. This work stems from a biographical urgency and develops as a photographic investigation into a specific threshold: the shifting boundary of mental distress, embodied in the lived experience of my twin sister, Viviana.
In the experience of twinhood, where identity is built upon constant mirroring and the partial fading of individual boundaries, the onset of an anxious-depressive adjustment disorder appears as a challenge where emotional peaks and sudden silences demand a delicate, constant readjustment of spaces, without ever eroding the role of affection within the family unit.
Through a suspended visual narrative, the objective is not to sensationalize distress nor to offer a reassuring rhetoric of destigmatization. On the contrary, VIVI questions the viewer on the porosity of that limit which society stubbornly considers rigid: where does an individual's “functionality” end, and where does stigma begin? The images document daily life not as a space of confinement, but as the territory where that boundary is daily crossed and dismantled through the act of coexistence. The dividing line between the normal and the pathological thus gives way to the complexity of existing together.
A twin sister cannot be explained; she is lived. With an intensity in all directions, unfiltered, and with an endless depth. A lively and hypersensitive child, today Viviana is a brilliant adult living with an anxious-depressive adjustment disorder. A concentration of strength dressed in vulnerability, head under water, rollercoasters starting up again. For me, simply: Vivi.
This work is a tribute to my sister, to my parents, to our family, to the strong bonds of affection that endure through the peaks and the pauses, and to the colors that fill her life and ours—just as she is, just as we are.
